Arsons Fuel Churches' Faith, Anger

Parishioners Rebuild In Series Of Attacks

June 11, 1996|By Jan Crawford Greenburg, Tribune Staff Writer.

BOLIGEE, Ala. — Walking through the strong, wooden skeleton of the Little Zion Baptist Church, Rev. Willie Carter put his face to a two-by-four that stretched to the sky and inhaled the sweet smell of new lumber.

"Spruce," he said softly, barely audible above the buzz of saws spraying sawdust from fresh cut planks for the church's new frame. "Best there is."

Just months ago, there was only broken brick and ash and the acrid smell of smoke, an odor that lingered in clothes and followed people home, serving as a foul reminder of hate.

The country church, surrounded by shade trees atop a hill miles from nowhere, burned Jan. 11, the same night another church in this rural town also was destroyed by fire. That brought to three the number of black churches burned here in a month--all of them believed to be arsons and all unsolved.

Federal authorities now are investigating 32 suspicious fires within the last 18 months at predominantly black churches across the South. There have been four in the past week, including one just down the road from Boligee in Greensboro, hometown of former Chicago Mayor Eugene Sawyer.

Another church burned last week in Charlotte, N.C., and police have arrested a 13-year-old white girl in connection with the case. The two others burned late Sunday and early Monday in Texas.

Anger and frustration are intensifying as the arsons and their mystery grow. No one can say with any certainty whether the rash of church fires spread across nine southern states is the work of racist conspirators, devil-worshipping vandals or even copycats.

"Given the pattern, we would be nuts not to be looking at a larger conspiracy as one of the possible explanations of what's going on," James Johnson, assistant Treasury secretary for enforcement, said in Washington.

"We are not in a position to say, one way or the other, whether or not there was an overarching conspiracy. But there's clearly a very troubling pattern, and we are clearly determined to get to the bottom of it."

But a group of ministers told a news conference in Washington Monday they were not yet persuaded of the government's zeal. They said they were unhappy that it took so long for President Clinton and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who met with them Sunday, to commit the federal resources necessary to solve the crimes. In some instances, a few said, they and their parishioners were treated as suspects by authorities.

Clinton, who will travel to Greeleyville, S.C., Wednesday to tour a church rebuilt after it burned last year, also urged quick passage of a bill sponsored by Reps. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) and John Conyers (D-Mich.) that would make it easier to prosecute people for burning churches.

The frustration among the ministers gathered in Washington is more than evident in western Alabama.

Church, as one man puts it, is sacred here, the single place a person can be "as close to the Lord as there is."

"It put a lot of people going to wondering what caused this. Why would a person do this?" said Robert Woolridge, 42, a contractor who is helping rebuild one of the burned churches, the Mount Zion Baptist Church.

"I do have my own answer. If you're working for the Lord, you don't do this. This was some person working for the devil."

People here frequently ask why the FBI is willing to command such a large operation in Montana, where it is negotiating with the barricaded Freemen extremists, but not in Alabama or other southern states where churches have burned. A church burning, they believe, is much more serious.

"If you want to touch any man's heart, you touch the church. The church is the way to a man's heart, especially a man who loves God like myself," said Charlie Means, 32, a deacon for 20 years at Mount Zion, which burned in December. "If a person does it one time and gets away with it, don't you know he's going to do it again?"

A thriving town when cotton was king, Boligee has a population of 268 and one flashing yellow light at the main intersection. Its closed and crumbling stores provide little more than bricks for scavengers redoing old homes in Birmingham and Mobile.

The only places open for business downtown are the Boligee Supermarket, a narrow brick building overlooking railroad tracks that once took cotton out of town and brought wealth in, and the worn, two-room Boligee Cafe. And they survive because of the local catfish farms, which employ many area residents.

But in a depressed area in one of the state's poorest counties, all three of the burned churches now have at least started to rise from the ashes.

"It was devastating at first, but seeing the church go back, that feels great," said Tony Carter, 33, secretary of the Little Zion church, during a break from framing up the new building. "When it first happened, everything seemed so uncertain."